


at home in this nation we've made

by Sosostris



Series: The River's Destiny [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Airbender Ty Lee (Avatar), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s03e12 The Western Air Temple, Gen, Order of the White Lotus, Very Minor Jeong Jeong/Hama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:21:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26894380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sosostris/pseuds/Sosostris
Summary: “I’m on your side,” Ty Lee could say, but she doesn’t know how to explain where she fits into all of this. How would she begin to tell the tale, anyway? And who would believe her?
Series: The River's Destiny [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1841596
Comments: 4
Kudos: 64





	at home in this nation we've made

**Author's Note:**

> “Kujen stepped backward to give her room, still with that dancer’s awareness of space. His eyes were both dark and bright. Cheris knelt before him in the formal obeisance to a heptarch, and said, ‘I’m your gun.’”
> 
> — Yoon Ha Lee, _Ninefox Gambit_

Breakfast has not been an ordeal—she would not use that word—but Ty Lee remembers, very vividly, trying to balance on a burning tightrope over the jaws of hunger-crazed wildlife, just half a year ago. Breakfast is at least two-thirds of the way there each morning.

Unlike Zuko, who’s more than earned his stripes, Ty Lee isn’t sure yet how she belongs in this group. It’s why she and Mai tend to sit off to the side, cradling their rice balls, or rice porridge, or—on one rare occasion, when Sokka was feeling generous—seal jerky.

Suki treats them with frosty suspicion, and she refuses to blame the Kyoshi captain.

“I’m on your side,” Ty Lee could say, but she doesn’t know how to explain where she fits into all of this. How would she begin to tell the tale, anyway? And who would believe her?

Still, the Avatar—round with childhood, the closest to her in age, and forgiving to a fault—does his best to be accommodating. So he scooted just a little bit closer to her corner of the breakfast circle this morning, poised to pull back if she rebuffed him—but why would she?

Out of an abundance of caution, Ty Lee elbows Mai to behave, but her own smile is genuine. She nods in all the right places as Aang starts on how lucky it was that Zuko turned up when he did, complete with speech practice with frogs—which sounds remarkably like Zuko, Ty Lee muses.

“I needed a firebending teacher, after all,” says Aang, “it’s not like we were going to run into _Jeong Jeong_ again.” And: “Hey, do you think Princess Azula will be able to get her bending back?”

“Wait, what?” Ty Lee asks, ice water sliding down her spine. There’s a name she hadn’t expected.

The cosmos is funny, and “speak of the general, the general arrives,” as the idiom goes—although, in this case, it’s a disgraced admiral instead. The words are barely out of her mouth when the man himself, Jeong Jeong, strolls into their makeshift encampment.

Toph, clearly abashed at missing the intrusion, leaps to her feet a moment too late; Katara half-rises with a gasp, hand at her hip-pouch. And, although in truth she _is_ surprised, Ty Lee lets her lips form a silent, exaggerated O while she thinks through her next steps.

Three weeks have passed since the Boiling Rock, two weeks since Azula lost her bending—something about not being angry enough anymore. (There are no benders in the house of Tai—they made very, very sure of that, lest the army come calling—so she can’t say how it works.)

It’s also been three days since Ty Lee came to the rueful conclusion that the ruins of the Western Air Temple are too isolated for any way to communicate with the outside world, short of spontaneously developing the ability to turn into a bird. Which, unlike flexible joints and good hair, does _not_ run in Ty Lee’s family, or hasn’t so far, at least.

Yet here in the flesh enters Jeong Jeong the Deserter. Like she was saying: The cosmos is funny.

Ty Lee makes what Ty Woo would call an _executive decision_. “Hello, Uncle Jeong,” she chirps.

She ignores Zuko’s squawk, the way Mai’s head swivels to stare at her. The others look puzzled, but they’re _foreigners_ ; as far as they’re concerned, everyone in the Fire Nation knows each other. Only Zuko and Mai—and Azula, were Azula not being kept away from the Avatar—would know better than to presume that a duke’s daughter and a seaman of low birth are acquainted.

It registers in Ty Lee’s head that this is the second unexpected arrival the Western Air Temple, to go by Teo’s breathless recitals, during campfire nights, of an attack by “big, buff, exploded things with his _face tattoo_.” Maybe it’s time to move on, she thinks loudly into the universe.

“Did you come alone?” Ty Lee continues, making sure to sound curious, not concerned.

Jeong Jeong spreads his arms, a universal gesture of goodwill. It’s less reassuring when you recall that all his limbs are weapons, but Ty Lee supposes it’s the thought that counts.

With an ambassador’s poise, he announces that he’s unaccompanied, “but I represent a group of men from all nations with common interests—specifically, peace.” Though his tone is gruff, Ty Lee has heard enough of it growing up, crouched on the stairs with her sisters while he debriefed her parents in the living room below, to understand that a smile curls underneath.

Group of men is right, Ty Lee notes, humming to herself. Sure, there might be women among the agents, but the leadership is all male. She’s grown up with this norm in the Fire Nation, she saw it among the Dai Li, and she doesn’t expect anything less of a multicultural secret society.

Unbidden, a flash of memory from one of those childhood nights: Jeong Jeong in the company of a woman maybe ten years older than he was, prematurely aged, with wiry tendons jutting from dark, paper-thin skin. His wife? Who knew? The crone introduced himself in a strange accent as Nini—if not a false name, then a foreign one at least—and Ty Lee never saw her again.

 _Men from all nations_ , Jeong Jeong said. Now, he adds with an expressive shrug that he was sent by this society to scout the former Air Temples for a potential base.

 _Base for what?_ Ty Lee wonders, and Katara says that aloud, warily.

This is good company, trustworthy company, so it is only instinct that makes doubt curl in Ty Lee’s gut for an instant, when Jeong Jeong readily replies, “The liberation of the queen of cities.”

A good move, all told, based on the pieces now in play on the paisho board. If Jeong Jeong walks free—if the grandmaster general is free—if the Deserter and the Dragon of the West are working hand in hand, then there is no other move that Iroh will accept, Ty Lee thinks, nodding with satisfaction.

“Yeah,” says Zuko, unhesitating, as though he has given the matter consideration already. “Fine, stay here, I’ve another place in mind where we’d be in better position to reach Caldera.”

He meets Jeong Jeong’s gaze steadily, without elaborating on where this might be. So he’s learnt to be a king at last. The Water Tribe siblings have adopted the same stance, Ty Lee notices.

On the other hand, the Avatar looks uncomfortable, Mai looks bored, and a frown is creasing Suki’s forehead. Some people were born for politics and some weren’t, Ty Lee thinks sadly. She’s no politician. She goes unarmed herself, but she’s always been a weapon in someone else’s hand.

Yet, even with Zuko’s consent, insurrections don’t just plan themselves; there’s logistics to discuss, questions about manpower and supplies and _chronological synchronisation_ , a concept that makes Ty Lee itch with aversion. Zuko and the Avatar’s companions thrash these out with gusto, Chief Hakoda weighing in at intervals as he pledges himself to Ba Sing Se’s cause, so it takes a while before Jeong Jeong can slip away to where Ty Lee has slunk back against a wall.

“They’re saying the princess has been kidnapped and assassinated,” Jeong Jeong tells her. “Replaced with an impostor, should she re-emerge. There’s orders to kill the fake on sight.”

He quirks an overgrown eyebrow at her.

Ty Lee bites her lip. “Azula’s in the former refectory, and she can’t bend. Nothing to do with me,” she adds, crossing her fingers. She didn’t chi-block Azula _that_ hard, she knows.

When Azula’s sparks first fizzled out—which Sokka, who had appointed himself the princess’s confidant and number one guard, declared a sign of progress—Zuko’s gaze only slid to the ground, while the Avatar said, “Oh _no_ , who _ever_ could help her?”

The boys had such terrible tells, Ty Lee thought then, although she is starting to feel fond about it. At this point, she’s not sure that much can be done about their lamentable inability to lie. It certainly pales against her own. And, on that note, she hopes Zuko won’t ask any about her familiarity with Jeong Jeong until they get to wherever they’re going.

Following instructions was baked too deep into her upbringing to make misleading a superior enjoyable, and, if they can pull this off, she anticipates that Zuko will be her liege soon enough.

For his part, Jeong Jeong waves away Azula’s missing bending. “I think I can take care of that,” he says, without explaining exactly _why_ Azula shooting fire again would be a positive development.

Ty Lee considers this offer. She doesn’t want to mention that the Deserter has not been known as a good teacher, that his most famous pupil was Zhao the Mad. Maybe the already-mad need a different approach, after all. The Fire Nation always wanted instructors to teach bending as fighting, but Jeong Jeong has always had the air of a brawling _philosopher_.

“Are you taking her to Ba Sing Se?” At Jeong Jeong’s nod, she shrugs lightly. “I wouldn’t, but it’s up to you. And”—an afterthought, but inevitable—“up to her.” Azula is like her—a weapon, too.

Ty Lee wonders if she would have been any good as a philosopher. Probably not. Too much thinking. She doesn’t like that. She was trained not to overthink, not to query too much—to let her body tumble and crumple in obedience to gravity and orders.

People think she joined the circus to get beyond Azula’s reach, and that’s certainly true, but _boy_ , she was tired of being a just another tool, one of seven sisters, for the White Lotus too. All her effort to avoid taking a stand, and the cosmos sure is funny, because it’s too late for that now.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is, again, from _Hamilton_ —specifically, “One Last Time.” FYI, the working title for this one was “Spy Lee,” so I’m glad I restrained myself.
> 
> Events could proceed largely as per canon from here—the White Lotus retake Ba Sing Se, Aang fights the Fire Lord—although Zuko and Katara no longer have a princess to fight in the capital, to the dismay of a million shippers all at once. Or things might go in another direction, wildly unforeseen by your humble author. I have no idea! Feel free to pick the idea up and run with it.
> 
> And that’s it—that’s the end! Thank you for your patience with this AU series.


End file.
